“The Million Puppet March — a political rally against Mitt Romney’s debate remarks about Big Bird and cutting funding to public television — may not have actually been a million puppets strong, but furry monsters came from far and near in a post-Halloween parade of support for PBS on Saturday.

The march to the Capitol set off from Lincoln Park shortly after 11 a.m., with the participants singing the “Sesame Street” theme song, and the Muppets’ “Mahna Mahna.” They were asked to keep to the sidewalk, but the hundreds of marchers soon spilled into the street, requiring a police escort. They chanted:

‘Power to the puppets! We can save the Muppets!’

‘Whose street? Sesame Street!’

‘What do we want? Cookies! When do we want them? Now!’

‘EL-MO! We won’t go!’

–“The Million Puppet March: Fighting for public broadcasting, with felt and fur,” Maura Judkis, Washington Post

Three members of the feminist Russian punk band Pussy Riot were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and sentenced to two years in prison. The criminal incident in question: On February 21st, the band performed a “punk prayer” protest in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral as part of the demonstrations following the disputed re-election of Vladimir Putin. Some feel the Church is too politically tied to the Putin regime.

The prison-bound band members are philosophy student and mother Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, mother and Greenpeace activist Maria Alekhina, and artist and computer programmer Yekaterina Samutsevich. To mark the occasion, the band released a new recording (above), and it’s not a statement of remorse. The song is called “Putin Lights Up the Fires”(путин зажигает костры).

The protests are getting results. The Israeli cabinet has just approved a new tax plan reducing taxes on low-income wage earners and raising them for the rich and for corporations. Other new policies include cuts to the defense budget.

Each weekend, groups come to Washington, DC in the mystical belief that gathering crowds near monuments and marble buildings will somehow alter the cosmos or change the votes of their duly elected weasels. These political pilgrims invariably leave DC disappointed, only to be replaced by next weekend’s hopeful hordes.